a while ago i accidentally turned the cinematic window, but i didn't particularly mind, although i did miss being able to look at combat situations elsewhere than where i was looking (usually when attacking an opponent's stations etc and they attacked mine) so i turned it back on. however, now its not quite clean, its a bit pixelly and glitchy. any thoughts?

What do you mean by pixelly and glitchy? The cinematic window graphics details are always not as good as the main window. Have you done any driver updates between now and when it worked ok?

Try deleting the ARMADA.PRF file in the root directory. Next time you launch the game, go into settings from the main screen and change the graphics/sound settings as needed. The PRF file might not exist depending on your computer, but deleting it can reset the settings correctly.

Also, are you running the 1.3 patch for A1? If so, not all resolutions are properly supported, so you may just have to change the resolution.

i havent got the patch, no, but i did do as you've said with the root directory. its now cleaned up, it almost had blocks of no movement on it at points, thats what i meant by the very technical terms "pixelly" and "glitchy"